TikTok is announcing new partnerships aimed at making it easier for brands to tap into music and sound on the platform. The company has expanded its TikTok Marketing Partners program and introduced six certified partners that will help brands create “sound-on” strategies for the platform. TikTok notes that it essentially wants to connect brands with […]
Inkitt books $59M investment, wants to turn its data-driven, self-publishing platform into a multi-media powerhouse
Book sales during the pandemic went up, and it seems the amount we are reading did, too. Now Inkitt, the startup that operates a free, popular platform of the same name for anyone to write and publish stories — stories that Inkitt then analyses using data science to determine which of them to take to […]
China roundup: Tesla supplier CATL to buy Canada’s Millennial Lithium
Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch’s China roundup, a digest of recent events shaping the Chinese tech landscape and what they mean to people in the rest of the world. China’s anti-competition tech crackdown continues to redefine the dynamics among the country’s internet giants, leading to collaboration between Alibaba and Tencent in the payments race. In […]
TikTok’s new ad products invite users to interact with taps, swipes, likes and more
TikTok this week presented its new plan to ramp up advertiser investment in its video platform with the expansion of e-commerce, a new promise of “brand safety” and the launch of several new and interactive ad formats, ranging from clickable stickers to “Choose Your Own Adventure”-type ads to “super likes” and more. The additions, the […]
TikTok Shopping expands with more partnerships, LIVE Shopping, new ads and more
TikTok is expanding its investment in e-commerce. Earlier this year, the video platform began piloting TikTok Shopping in the U.S., U.K., and Canada, in partnership with Shopify. The deal allowed Shopify merchants with a TikTok For Business account to add a Shopping tab to their TikTok profiles and sync their product catalogs to the app […]
TikTok reached 1 billion monthly active users
TikTok announced in a blog post today that 1 billion people use TikTok every month. That means that on this big rock in space that we call home, about one in seven-and-a-half people are regularly watching short-form videos of dancing, dangerous “milk crate challenges” and even actual educational content. For context, Facebook said that in […]
China roundup: Meng Wanzhou’s release and Huawei’s future
Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch’s China roundup, a digest of recent events shaping the Chinese tech landscape and what they mean to people in the rest of the world. On Friday, Huawei’s chief financial executive Meng Wanzhou was released from house arrest in Vancouver after reaching a breakthrough deal with the U.S. Justice Department. Chinese […]
China Roundup: Beijing is tearing down the digital ‘walled gardens’
Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch’s China roundup, a digest of recent events shaping the Chinese tech landscape and what they mean to people in the rest of the world. This week, China gets serious about breaking down the walled gardens that its internet giants have formed for decades. Two major funding rounds were announced, […]
Microsoft acquires video creation and editing software maker Clipchamp
Video editing software may become the next big addition to Microsoft’s suite of productivity tools. On Tuesday, Microsoft announced it’s acquiring Clipchamp, a company offering web-based video creation and editing software that allows anyone to put together video presentations, promos or videos meant for social media destinations like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. According to Microsoft, […]
China roundup: Beijing wants tech giants to shoulder more social responsibilities
This week, the gaming industry again became a target of Beijing, which imposed arguably the world’s strictest limits on underage players. On the other hand, China’s tech titans are hastily answering Beijing’s call for them to take on more social responsibilities and take a break from unfettered expansion.